Current Affairs – July 23, 2026

{GS1 – MIH} Lokmanya Tilak and Chandra Shekhar Azad

Context (DDN): Prime Minister paid tributes to freedom fighters Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Chandra Shekhar Azad on their birth anniversaries.

Lokmanya Tilak (1856-1920)

Born on 23 July 1856 in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, he was a leading nationalist leader and a prominent member of the Lal–Bal–Pal trio.
He was a pioneer of the Extremist phase of the Indian National Movement. He popularized the slogan “Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it.“
He played a pivotal role in India’s freedom struggle by advocating Swaraj, promoting Swadeshi, and mobilizing the masses against British rule.
He transformed Ganesh Utsav (1893) and Shivaji Jayanti (1895) into public festivals to foster nationalism and political awareness.
He started the newspapers Kesari (Marathi) and The Mahratta (English) in 1881 to propagate nationalist ideas and mobilize public opinion against British rule.
Tilak was referred to as the “Father of Indian Unrest” by British journalist Valentine Chirol.

Chandra Shekhar Azad (1906-1931)

Born on July 23, 1906, he was one of the prominent revolutionary freedom fighters who played a leading role in India’s struggle for independence through armed resistance against British rule.
Following the death of Ram Prasad Bismil, he reorganised the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA) and renamed it the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA), strengthening the revolutionary movement against British colonial rule.
He worked alongside revolutionaries such as Bhagat Singh, Ram Prasad Bismil, and Ashfaqulla Khan. Azad participated in the Kakori Train Action (1925).
Vowed never to be captured alive by the British and fulfilled that pledge by taking his own life during police encounter at Alfred Park (now Chandra Shekhar Azad Park), Prayagraj, on 27 February 1931.

{GS2 – Governance} Internet Shutdowns in India *

Context (TH): Union government suspended mobile internet across parts of Central Delhi during the CJP’s ‘Chalo Sansad’ protest.

Extent of Internet Shutdowns in India

India ranked 2^nd globally with 65 shutdowns in 2025, mainly during protests, conflicts, communal violence, and religious holidays.
Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur historically recorded frequent, prolonged shutdowns.
India accounted for 920 of 2,102 recorded global shutdowns since 2016, nearly 44% of the total.
Ranked 9^th globally in the total duration of disruptions and incurred costs of $179.8 million in 2025.

Legal and Statutory Framework

Section 20(2)(b) of the Telecommunications Act, 2023, and the Telecommunications (Temporary Suspension of Services) Rules, 2024, govern internet shutdowns.
The 2024 Rules require that every suspension order must specify the reasons, set a precise duration, and define the affected geographic area.
Grounds: Emergencies, sovereignty threats, security concerns, risks to foreign relations, public disorder, or incitement to offences.
Competent Authority: Union or State Home Secretaries can issue shutdown orders, with Joint Secretaries authorised only in urgent emergencies.
Duration Limit: The 2024 Rules limit shutdowns to 15 days and require a Review Committee to assess each order within five days. However, successive renewals can allow indefinite shutdowns through repeated short-term orders.
Enforcement: Telecom providers are required to appoint nodal officers in each state or union territory.

Judicial Safeguards

Anuradha Bhasin v. UoI (2020): SC protected online speech under Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(1)(g), declaring indefinite shutdowns impermissible. Shutdowns must be necessary, proportional, and used as a last resort.
Faheema Shirin v. State of Kerala (2019): Kerala High Court declared the Right to the Internet a FR under Article 21.
Press Freedom: Supreme Court recognised press freedom a FR under Article 19(1)(a) in Bennett Coleman (1972) and Indian Express Newspapers (1984).

Read More > Internet Shutdowns in India

{GS2 – Governance} Regulating Foreign Philanthropy Ecosystem in India

Context (TH): Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act has reshaped India’s philanthropy ecosystem from an opaque foreign-grant marketplace into a centralised, security-vetted development architecture.

Regulation of Foreign Philanthropy in India

Under the FCRA 2010, every NGO must obtain a 5-year registration certificate or prior case-by-case approval from the Ministry of Home Affairs before accepting any foreign funds.
Sub-Granting Prohibition: Registered organisations are strictly prohibited from transferring or sub-granting their foreign contributions to any other domestic entity.
Purpose Tracking: Funds must be spent on the specific programmes for which they were approved. Using foreign funds for unapproved geographical regions or religious conversions is strictly prohibited.

State of Foreign Philanthropy in India

Inflow: Annual foreign philanthropic contributions have doubled over the past decade, from roughly ₹10,000 crore to nearly ₹22,000 crore. Domestic private philanthropy, at ₹1.18 lakh crore annually, exceeds foreign philanthropic inflows by more than fivefold.
Registration: Only about 14,500 of the six lakh voluntary organisations listed on the NGO Darpan have active registrations. 27.7% of organisations granted FCRA licences since 2012 are currently active.
Concentration: Tamil Nadu has the highest number of active foreign-funded organisations, while Bihar records the steepest attrition, with over 85% of registrations cancelled or deemed expired.
Geographic Skew: Just five states (Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh) receive nearly two-thirds of all international philanthropic remittances.

Significance for Regulating Foreign Philanthropy

Infrastructure Shield: Statutory restrictions on foreign-funded advocacy shield critical infrastructure projects from externally driven disruption and organised obstruction.
Overhead Containment: Limiting administrative expenses to 20% compels non-profits to channel most foreign capital directly into on-the-ground, grassroots interventions.
End-Use Accountability: The ban on inter-agency fund transfers ensures direct, uncompromised accountability for end-use by dismantling opaque downstream networks.
Dormancy Purge: Periodic cancellation of non-compliant or inactive registrations removes shell entities and ensures that only financially transparent organisations operate in the domestic development sector.

Challenges with Regulating Foreign Philanthropy

Approval Backlog: The administrative backlog, by extending renewal processing times by up to three years, stalls the deployment of committed international grants.
Entry Barrier: The requirement for new applicants to demonstrate ₹15 lakh in prior societal spending blocks resource-constrained organisations from accessing international philanthropic capital.
Utilisation Threshold: The mandate to spend at least ₹10 lakh in foreign contributions across two financial years risks licence revocation for entities holding long-horizon project reserves.
Definition Ambiguity: The absence of a statutory definition for prohibited proselytisation practices leaves minority-run healthcare and educational institutions vulnerable to arbitrary compliance inquiries.
Operational Exclusivity: Routing all foreign contributions exclusively through a single New Delhi branch imposes administrative chokepoints and transaction delays on regional organisations.

Read More> Private Philanthropy in India

{GS2 – IR} WTO Plurilateral Agreements **

Context (IE): A group comprising the EU, Canada, the UK, Cambodia, and Gambia alleged that India is obstructing WTO reform by opposing plurilateral agreements on e-commerce and investment.

About Plurilateral Agreements

Plurilateral agreements are trade pacts voluntarily negotiated by specific subsets of member countries, rather than the entire WTO membership.
Scope: Unlike core multilateral agreements that bind all 166 WTO members, plurilateral agreements create binding obligations and rights only for signatory countries that ratify them.
Consensus: Under Article X.9 of the Marrakesh Agreement, adding a new official plurilateral agreement to Annex 4 requires explicit consensus from all WTO members.
Benefit-Sharing: Depending on the treaty, benefits may be shared exclusively among participants or extended to all WTO members on a Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) basis.

Two Types of Plurilateral Agreements

	Formal Plurilateral Agreements	Joint Statement Initiative
Legal Basis	Listed under Annex 4 of the Marrakesh Agreement.	Individual schedules of commitments under Annex 1
MFN Application	Benefits apply strictly to signatories. Non-members are legally excluded.	Benefits are extended to all WTO members on a non-discriminatory basis.
Free-Rider Risk	Non-signatories receive no rights or benefits under the agreement.	Activates only after a ‘critical mass’ threshold (often 90%+ of global trade) is reached.
Approval Process	Requires full consensus: All 166 WTO members must agree to add it to Annex 4 under Article X.9.	Participants add rules to their own national schedules without needing formal treaty amendments.
Examples	Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), Agreement on Trade in Civil Aircraft	E-Commerce, Services Domestic Regulation, Investment Facilitation for Development

Significance of Plurilateral Agreements

Veto Circumvention: Bypassing the 166-member unanimity requirement allows willing coalitions to secure immediate regulatory updates despite single-nation blockades.
Standard Elevation: Like-minded economic blocs can bypass lowest-common-denominator compromises to lock in stringent trade obligations across frontier regulatory domains.
Gridlock Isolation: Confining negotiations to specific regulatory sectors shields new frameworks from historical stalemates in unrelated legacy multilateral disputes.
Regulatory Incubation: Testing complex modern disciplines within a smaller subset of nations refines the legal architecture for future multilateral integration.
Fragmentation Anchor: Consolidating rules inside the WTO framework prevents major economies from abandoning the multilateral system for discriminatory regional trade blocs.

India’s Arguments Against Plurilateral Agreements

Consensus Subversion: Bypassing the consensus rule dismantles the equal-voice architecture of the WTO and blocks the unanimity required under Article X.9 to amend Annex 4.
Mandate Illegality: Negotiations launched without an explicit ministerial mandate lack the constitutional legitimacy required to integrate new agreements into the WTO legal framework.
S&DT Dilution: Uniform application of plurilateral rules strips developing countries of the Special and Differential Treatment flexibilities that multilateral agreements guarantee them.
Institutional Fragmentation: Exclusive inner-circle agreements splinter the WTO into a multi-tier club that permanently disadvantages non-participating members.
Mandate Defiance: Reviving dropped negotiating subjects through plurilateral channels violates previous ministerial decisions that explicitly removed them from the WTO agenda.

{GS2 – MoT} GREAT Scheme

Context (PIB): Ministry of Textiles is implementing the GREAT (Grant for Research and Entrepreneurship across Aspiring Innovators in Technical Textiles) scheme under the National Technical Textiles Mission.

Objective: To support India’s technical textiles start-up ecosystem by helping innovators, scientists, and technologists turn novel ideas and prototypes into commercial products.
Funding Support: Grant-in-aid up to ₹50 lakh per start-up over 18 months to commercialise prototypes. The Ministry provides an additional 10% to the designated incubator.
Priority Areas: High-performance fibres, smart textiles, artificial intelligence/IoT integration, and biodegradable or sustainable materials.
Eligibility: Applicants must be incubated at a recognised incubator to qualify. They must invest at least 10% of the funding amount in the project.

{GS3 – Envi} Amendment to Environment Impact Assessment Notification, 2006

Context (DTE): Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) issued orders restructuring India’s environmental clearance framework under the EIA Notification, 2006.

Objective: Eliminate administrative vacuums and delays in Category B project approvals caused by non-functional or lagging state appraisal bodies.
The framework establishes two permanent backup entities for each State/UT to assume operations if standard bodies lapse or delay evaluations:
1. Standing Authority on Environment Impact Assessment (SAEIA): Acts on behalf of State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA).
2. Standing Committee on Environment Impact Appraisal (SCEIA): Assumes the duties of State Level Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC).
- Tenure: These interim bodies function for an initial period of 6 months, extendable by another 6 months, capped cumulatively at 1 year.
Terms: The tenure of members of the SEIAA, the central Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) and state-level SEACs is extended from 3 to 4 years, with a maximum of two terms. A standard upper age limit of 70 years was set, extendable to 75 years in exceptional cases of shortage of qualified personnel.
Renewal: State governments must initiate the renewal and reconstitution process for SEIAAs and SEACs 6 months before their active terms expire.
Removal: The Central Government can terminate EAC, SEIAA or SEAC members mid-term if they cause persistent, objective delays in processing clearances.
Escalation: If a standard SEAC fails to complete a project appraisal within 120 days, the proposal escalates automatically to the newly formed SCEIA on the PARIVESH portal.
Devolution: Category B projects will no longer default to the Central Government (EAC) if a state-level committee dissolves or lapses.
Key Concerns: Replacing independent environmental scientists with ex-officio bureaucrats, bypassing central EAC oversight, and enforcing a 120-day cutoff pressures appraisal bodies toward rapid clearance over objective scientific risk assessment.

Read More> Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

{Prelims – Geo} Borophene

Context (PIB): Scientists have, for the first time, successfully demonstrated the use of borophene as a high-performance lubricant additive in castor oil.

Borophene is a single-atom-thick sheet of boron, made entirely of boron atoms. It is among the lightest, strongest, and most flexible known two-dimensional materials.
First synthesized in 2015, it is often called “graphene’s lighter, stronger, and more flexible cousin.”
Characteristics: It is an ultralight, exceptionally strong and flexible 2-D material with excellent electrical and thermal conductivity, high chemical reactivity, and low friction with high wear resistance.
Applications: Next-generation batteries, hydrogen storage, supercapacitors and flexible electronics, biomedical devices, sensors, catalysis, and advanced lubrication technologies.

{Prelims – IE} NSE’s Ahimsa Index

Context (IE): The National Stock Exchange launched the Nifty 500 Ahimsa index.

It is a thematic index designed to provide investors with exposure to the top 500 companies on the NSE whose business practices are aligned with the principles of “Ahimsa” or non-violence.
The index is the first of its kind in the country to provide investors a way to invest in companies that do not engage in animal cruelty.
Developed by the exchange in collaboration with the Ahimsagain Foundation, a non-profit organisation.
BSE, earlier, launched its Saatvik 100 index focused on the “Saatvik” philosophy, which stands against animal cruelty and exploitation, addictive and toxic products, and activities considered harmful or violent.

{Prelims – Infra} India’s First eVTOL Aircraft *

Context (BS): The ePlane Company, a deep-tech startup incubated at IIT Madras, unveiled India’s first full-scale electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft prototype, e200X (PT-01).

eVTOL uses electric propulsion, reducing noise, costs, and energy use, enabling Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) for fast, sustainable urban air transport.

PT-01 features a lightweight carbon-fibre airframe, carries one pilot with two passengers or up to 200 kg cargo and has a 110 km range for urban and regional mobility.
It is designed to take off and land on standard rooftops or helipads without requiring long runways.
Propulsion: Uses Distributed Electric Propulsion (DEP) with separate fixed propellers for vertical and forward flight, providing redundancy.

{Prelims – PIN World} Moldova

Context (PIB): President Droupadi Murmu arrived in Chișinău, marking the first-ever state visit by an Indian Head of State to Moldova.

Moldova (capital Chișinău) is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered to the west by Romania and to the north, east, and south by Ukraine. Most of it lies in the historical region of Bessarabia.
Rivers: Dniester (Nistru) is the longest river in Moldova; the Prut River forms its western border.
Largely a hilly plain of rolling uplands cut by deep river valleys. Dealul Bălănești (430 m) is its highest point.
Not an EU member but was granted EU candidate status in 2022.

Transnistria: Russian-controlled, unrecognised breakaway territory between the Dniester and the Ukrainian border, known as the “remnant of the Soviet Union”.

{Prelims – PIN World} North Macedonia

Context (PIB): President Droupadi Murmu arrived in Skopje, marking the first visit by an Indian President to North Macedonia.

North Macedonia (capital: Skopje) is a landlocked, mountainous country in the south-central Balkan Peninsula of Southeast Europe. It borders Kosovo and Serbia to the north, Bulgaria to the east, Greece to the south, and Albania to the west.
The country declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 and officially adopted the name ‘North Macedonia’ in 2019 following the Prespa Agreement with Greece.
North Macedonia is an official candidate for European Union membership and joined NATO in 2020.
Lake Ohrid, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is one of the oldest and deepest lakes in Europe.

{Prelims – Polity} Gor Boli’s Inclusion in the Eighth Schedule *

Context (PIB): Ministry of Tribal Affairs recently informed Parliament about continuing demands to include Gor Boli in the Eighth Schedule.

Gor Boli, also called Lambadi, is an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly by the Banjara community across Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan.
It lacks a standardised native script and is generally written in Devanagari, Telugu or Kannada scripts.

The Banjaras, also called Lambadi, Lambani, Vanjara or Sugali, traditionally formed a nomadic trading and pastoral community, originating from the Mewar region of Rajasthan.

About Eight Schedule

The Eighth Schedule of the IC, as provided for in Articles 344(1) and 351, lists India’s scheduled languages.
It originally listed 14 languages; three constitutional amendments increased the number to 22.
- The 21^st Amendment Act, 1967 added Sindhi, the 71^st Amendment Act, 1992 added Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali, and the 92^nd Amendment Act, 2003 added Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali.
There is no fixed criterion for including a language in the Eighth Schedule as per the Ashok Pahwa Committee (1996) and Sitakant Mohapatra Committee (2003).
Inclusion in the schedule ensures state support for the language’s literary development, permits its use in parliament, and allows all-India exams to be conducted in that language.

{Prelims – Misc} One Liners

IR – Pickaxe Mountain (IE): US President has threatened to strike Iran’s heavily fortified nuclear facility known as “Pickaxe Mountain”. Pickaxe Mountain (known in Iran as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La) is ⁠located 220km south of ⁠Tehran and 2km from the Natanz nuclear facility. The site is dug into a mountain in the Zagros range.
Initiatives – Mission Senehjori (IT): Announced by Assam Govt to strengthen state’s iconic Muga silk ecosystem. Aimed at converting silk waste into high-value spun yarn & creating new employment opportunities.
Envi – Puga Valley Geothermal Wells (TOI): India’s first and deepest geothermal wells (1,000 metres) drilled by the ONGC Energy Centre at Puga Valley, Eastern Ladakh. The twin wells are critical to the 1 MW pilot geothermal power project at Puga.
- Geological Survey of India has identified 340 geothermal sites, concentrated in the Himalaya (including Puga and Chumathang), the Son-Narmada-Tapti (SONATA) lineament, and the western coast.